


Hallow Be Thy Name

by Reneehart



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Blasphemous, Catholic School Girl! Hermione, F/M, Inappropriate use of a confessional booth, Masturbation, Oral Sex, Priest! Tom, Teacher-Student Relationship, Vaginal Sex, exploiting religious imagery, hermione is about 16 and tom is in his mid to late 20s, implied devil worship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:34:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23650909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reneehart/pseuds/Reneehart
Summary: After the murder of her father, Hermione finds her faith shaken, going through the motions of her life and school work. Her new religious studies teacher, Father Tom, seeks to help restore her faith, though his prayer is an unusual one.And to which God, she doesn't know.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Tom Riddle
Comments: 9
Kudos: 119





	Hallow Be Thy Name

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the tags, if any of the listed tags offend you, do not read.
> 
> This will be a short story, consisting of only 3 chapters. The following ones will be sexually explicit. Also, as a note, I've changed Hermione's father's career to a lawyer. 
> 
> Enjoy.

**Hallow Be Thy Name**

**Chapter One**

A heavy silence hung over the small home, a shadow of mourning that clung to the rafters and the roof and it’s pitched steeples. A small crowd was gathered, wandering from the entry hall to the dining room, the clean and stiff sitting room. Food was set out on the long dining room table, platters and crackers and cheeses that most people walked around, speaking in hushed voices.

There was a specific voice used at funerals. Just above a whisper, soft and placating tones. Not quite punctuated with the condescending tilt when speaking to a young child. But delicate, as if you were so fragile that speaking too loud, too sharp, would shatter you. Crumble the facade you wore until you were just fragments and dust buried with the dirt that would scratch along the lid of the coffin.

It drove Hermione mad.

It had been a week since her father passed, and people still spoke to her as if she were glass.

Maybe she was; the chirp of glass if you ran a finger across it, the undulating groan if you knocked it on the table too harshly. The notes that trembled before the break.

Her father hated the quiet. His desire for noise grated on her senses, his routine of coming home from work only to place a vinyl on the record player, placing the needle gingerly atop it as if performing surgery. Vinyls sounded richer, clearer, the notes resonating in a way that other electronics could never replicate, he would say, pouring himself and her mother a glass of wine as they began dinner.

She thought all of his music sounded the same, vinyl or tapes or discs: too loud, blaring over her as if it were a physical, tangible thing that shrouded her. A veil of noise and clamor that made reading difficult, her studies impossible.

She would stomp upstairs to her room when the laughter bubbled from the kitchen, followed with the clanging of pots and pans and pantry doors swinging close.

She regretted it now.

She missed the music.

Steam billowed around her, rising from the steady stream of water from the sink below, the basin filling. She hissed as she pulled her hands out from where they sat, skin red and stinging. The pain startled her from her thoughts, reminded her that she had been in the bathroom for nearly fifteen minutes, fog clinging to the surface of the window, blurring her reflection in the mirror.

Using the sleeve of her dress (all black, the uniform of the grief-ridden), she ran it over the mirror, examining her somewhat distorted face. Her eyes were heavy with purple bags, making her appear far older than she was, her already erratic hair a disheveled mess that threatened to break through the various pins and hairband. Her thin face framed in tight curls that had either slipped loose from her plait or were too short to begin with.

She was hardly recognizable, even to herself.

Turning away from the offensive image, she left the bathroom, slipping through the lower floor as discreetly as she could. She kept her eyes down, watching her heeled feet as she strode along the wall, hoping to not be stopped by a well-meaning relative or friend.

“Oh, Hermione, darling, can you answer the door please?” Martha called as she caught sight of her daughter rounding on the landing of the stairs, one hand curled over the bulbous end of the handrail. She was standing beside their neighbor, balancing a large casserole dish sealed with saran wrap. Hermione fought against her desire to sneer at the sight of it.

The fridge was full of tupperware and casserole dishes, a gesture meant to help lift the burden of moving on in the wake of tragedy. She hated them, each floral patterned pan and crinkled aluminum lid. They were a facsimile of kindness, a bandage over a festering wound. She hated that the evenings were filled with reheated lasagna as her mother sat on the phone, arguing over financial statements and long-forgotten records clouded with legal jargon.

It was a crude copy of the nights before her father died, the nights with music and laughter and knives chopping over cutting boards.

The doorbell rang again, and she pulled away from the stairs, swinging the door open.

Two men stood on the doorstep, clad in all black except for a white-collar wrapped around their necks.

“Father Armando,” she said, nodding her head in a stiff greeting to the one priest she recognized, the headmaster to the Catholic school she attended. He was older, the pliant skin of his face folding along his cheeks and across his jaw, deep fissures carving into the valley of his skin. Sparse hair- black mottled with gray- was brushed over his scalp, too thin to properly cover anything.

He smiled kindly at her, grabbing a hand that hadn’t been offered and laying his opposite palm over top it, giving her hand a firm squeeze. “My child, how are you doing? We’ve all been praying for you and your mother in this trying time.”

She nodded, eyes sliding to glance at the strange man standing beside Father Armando. He was far younger than his companion, perhaps only a handful of years older than Hermione herself. Handsome in a way that seemed borderline obscene, as if God himself crafted him, sending him out into the world to deliver His word on plump lips and twisted smiles. Dark hair curled over his brow, shadows swallowing the deep blue of his iris. His face was sculpted, cheeks hollow beneath the slope of his face. If not for the graceful swoop of his movements and the warmth of his cheeks- pinched pink in the October chill- she might have mistaken him for a statue. A statue carved in reverence of the gods, a love letter to their beauty. Carved from marble, the natural colors that swirled like rivers in the stone like the capillaries beneath his skin.

She hadn’t realized she was staring until Father Armando cleared his throat, tipping his head in the direction of his companion. “Ah, yes, my dear. You’ve been absent from school- this is Father Tom, our newest Religion Studies teacher. He’s yet to meet you, and when I told him where I was headed this afternoon I extended the invitation.”

“My apologies,” the man- Father Tom- spoke, his voice sibilant and smooth. “I hope I’m not intruding, I just wished to offer my condolences.”

A moment passed between them before Hermione realized it was her chance to respond, blinking rapidly as she answered, “Right, of course. Come in,” she said, stepping aside and holding the door wide. With a nod, they brushed passed her, entering the solemn living space occupied by shadows and hushed whispers. Father Armando found Martha, clasping her hands and speaking soft and soothing words.

But Father Tom lingered beside the door, his gaze sweeping across the room, only to land once more on Hermione. She shifted uncomfortably under his perusal, his gaze a tangible thing. It was heavy and oppressive, a strangulation- a thumb pressing down on her windpipe. It was a challenge, and she turned from it, following the path Father Armando had made.

She felt his eyes on her, following the sway of her curls and each shift of her shoulder blades.

X

Hermione’s heart hammered in her chest, a steady staccato that rattled against the cage of her ribs as if attempting to break free. She slammed the door behind her, feeling it shake in its frame as she pressed herself against it, eyes closed and trying to steady her breathing. It came to her ragged and desperate, thick gulping breaths that did little to expand her lungs. Her head spun, an ache beginning to form deep within the caverns of her skull, resonating within the spongy folds of her brain. She imagined it was splitting, coming undone as if the membrane was pulled at the seams.

Time slowed, seconds turning into torturous hours that dragged forward. She was not sure how long she leaned against the door, trying and failing to calm her breathing and grasp hold of something like sanity or at least a decent veil of it. How long it had been since Father Armando stood before the group of mourners and began a prayer, the practiced words like a song one knew forwards and back but had long since grown unimpressed by? How long since she stood from her chair, knocking it down to the floor with a clatter that disturbed the prayer, and fled the room?

It felt like an eternity, a lifetime stretched within those moments.

But her breath did return it, even if she truly thought she might die, drowning on nothing but grief and somber glances. Suffocating on muffled prayers.

She did not die, the heartbeat coursing through her veins was evidence of that, beating steadily beneath her skin. And with a slow breath- as if testing out her lungs to make sure they were working properly once more- she pushed herself from the door and walked into the room, palms splaying on the rough surface of her father’s desk and leaning forward. She had run into the first private room she found, her father’s office. Dark and silent, untidy in a way that ached.

No one had been in here since he passed, leaving the room in a state of grim remembrance. Frozen in time, a stage that was arranged to be just so. She could see the file tossed casually at the corner of the desk, filled with whatever case her father had been thumbing through before rising from that chair and shrugging on a jacket that was clean and not bloodstained.

Idly, she reached out, fingers pinching at the corner of the file folder as if considering whether or not to read it. It was, probably, the last thing he read- words that had settled in his brain and etched out a place within his memory.

Her eyes prickled, and she let out a sharp breath, pulling her hand away as if it had been burned.

“An entertainer Father Armando is not. I would have run from the room too if I were allowed,” a voice spoke, cutting through the silence.

She startled, turning on her heel and bracing against the desk. Father Tom stood in front of the door, hands clasped behind his back as he took one, two...three slow steps into the room. “Your mother was worried after your little scene. I offered to check on you,” he said in explanation.

She chewed her lip, inclining her chin and hoping the tears that were beginning to form weren’t watering along her lashes. “I’m fine, thanks. I just need a minute.”

It was intended to be a dismissal, but he did not move- either not understanding her or ignoring her. He just continued to look at her, the same oppressive and heavy glance from before.

“You know, it’s not uncommon for one’s faith to be questioned in the moments following something so tragic,” Father Tom said, a knowing glint to his eyes as he watched her intently. She shifted under his gaze, crossing her arms over her chest in a small, pitiful manner as if it might stop him from seeing into her.

“I don’t know what I might have done to make you feel I’ve lost faith, but I apologize, Father,” she said sharply, raising her chin forward to make herself appear taller, less cowering than she felt.

He stepped forward, enclosing her within the small office, the shadows and lights shifting with his movements. “No need to apologize. There’s no shame in it. It’s easy to feel abandoned, forgotten by God. Who among us hasn’t had something so terrible it shook and tried us? Some believe it’s His way of testing us.”

“That’s not fair,” she said before she could stop herself, the words slipping from her lips like spit. It seemed useless to decry the justice of a God she wasn’t sure she believed in to one of his devoted servants.

To her surprise, he nodded once, lips curling into a grin. The word wicked came to mind.

“No, it’s not fair. It’s cruel, to make someone suffer just to test the lengths and bounds of their loyalty. But I don’t think He was ever in the business of kindness, between you and me.” His voice became distant as he turned from her, running a hand along the collection of vinyls placed on the middle shelf of her father’s bookcase. He pulled his hand back, examined the palm and fingertips as if noting the dust now gathered in the fine lines, before returning to peruse the albums. He pulled one out, turning it over. She recognized the sleeve- Cat Stevens, the edges torn and crinkled to reveal the layers of pressed cardboard. ‘ _Teaser and the Fire Cat,’_ she thought, recalling with a tightening in her chest her father singing _‘Morning has Broken’_ as they readied for church, his voice off-key and too high to truly capture the weight of the song.

“Don’t touch those,” she said, moving towards him and pulling the record from his grasp while still emboldened. She held it flat against her chest, a protective gesture. He said nothing, cocking his head as if trying to see her from a different angle, his eyes narrowing. She cleared her throat. “What do you mean he’s not in the business of kindness?”

He blinked, returning from his thoughts. _“The Lord is a jealous and vengeful God, the Lord is vengeful and strong and wrath. The Lord is vengeful against his foes; he rages against his enemies,”_ he began to recite, his words like a song, spoken to a beat that she could not hear. Rhythmic and melodic, the syllables flowing like high notes, the diction like a bass. _“The Lord is very patient but great in power; the Lord punishes. His is in whirlwind and storm, clouds are the dust of his feet.”_

She interrupted him, her voice sounding small and quiet against his deep and reverberating baritone, but he stopped speaking the moment she started, watching her as if she were performing a sermon of her own. _“He can blast the sea and make it dry up; he can dry up all the rivers. Bashan and Carmel wither, the bud of Lebanon withers. The mountains quake because of him, the hills melt away. The earth heaves before- the world and all who dwell in it.”_

She finished, averting her gaze and looking at the worn album held tight against her. “I know my scripture, Father.”

“You do, very well. You must be a very good student,” he said, the praise curling in a way that made her shift. Her stomach felt warm, coiling in an unfamiliar way, and her face flushed for reasons she barely understood. He was making her uncomfortable, more than a priest had any right to. What sort of priest came into your home to put your father to rest, only to ignite a flame within you that corroded your skin and speak such blasphemous things?

“He does not deal in kindness,” he began, unconcerned by the inner turmoil growing within her, the painful twists of her stomach that might have otherwise brought her to her knees. “He offers sanctuary only to those who devote themselves to Him entirely. He bargains and wavers His love with your happiness and safety as the coin. Reject Him, and he will punish you with all the earthly woes he can manage. Love Him, and sometimes he’ll do it anyway, just to make sure you don’t waver. It’s no wonder the angels who fell turned against Him. He was a tyrant.”

She swallowed. “Are you certain you should be saying all this, Father?” She hadn’t realized she had leaned closer to him until her arm brushed against his clothed torso. His words felt forbidden, dangerous, and yet it made them all the more enticing. Like wine and breaking curfew and lies.

“It’s the truth. There is no righteousness to be found in hollow words, and I assure you my awareness does not hinder my ability to devote and serve. Just as your lack of belief doesn’t prevent you from going through the motions of devotion.”

She blanched at the accusation, leaning back on her heels to finally look up at him, brows furrowed. “I’ve already told you-”

He cut her off, and she found she was thankful for it, knowing she was getting cross in her frustration. The last thing she needed was to be discovered by her mother shouting at a Priest.

“There’s no point in lying, Hermione. That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? Confide in me all your greatest fears, your greatest sins. And you’re not nearly as difficult to read as you’d like to think. I know you go through the routine for your parents- honorable. But you yourself don’t believe in any of it; the floods, the angels, the demons-”

“Demons aren’t real,” she snorted, rolling her eyes despite her best restraints.

He tilted his chin, chewed his lip thoughtfully. “Are you so sure?”

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a review if you're so inclined, and follow me on tumblr at reneehartblog for misc. fandom content, sneak peeks to stories, and general idiocy on my part.


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